June 27--REPORTING FROM TUPELO, Miss. -- Amber Hamilton and Annice Smith were the first same-sex couple to marry in Mississippi -- and nearly the last, at least for now.
Only three same-sex couples were able to wed before the state's attorney general ordered court clerks to stop issuing them marriage licenses. It was the first of what is expected to be many twists and turns as Mississippi digs in its heels against Friday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing such unions.
Although the high court declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right in all 50 states, Mississippi Atty. Gen. Jim Hood said the state would wait for the local federal appeals court to lift a stay before it began issuing licenses to same-sex couples.
"The Supreme Court's decision is not immediately effective in Mississippi. It will become effective in Mississippi, and circuit clerks will be required to issue same-sex marriage licenses, when the 5th Circuit lifts the stay," Hood said.
Nobody knows when that might happen. In the meantime, Mississippi court clerks were left in limbo, along with eager couples who began showing up at their offices Friday.
"Good luck. Hopefully when you come back I'll be set up," the flustered county clerk in Hinds County, Barbara Dunn, said as a lesbian couple was told there was no guarantee they could get a license. Photographers and reporters surrounded Dunn as the women listened patiently and then left, hoping to return once things were clear.
The delay sparked a legal response from attorneys in the lawsuit Campaign for Southern Equality vs. Bryant, the case that led to Mississippi's ban on same-sex marriage being struck down by a judge, who then put his ruling on hold pending a ruling by the appeals court. In a motion filed Friday afternoon, lawyers for the Campaign for Southern Equality asked that the decision handed down by the Supreme Court hours before be enforced.
"It is now time for the Supreme Court's ruling ... to be followed throughout this great nation. We are confident that state officials in Mississippi will honor the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution and will facilitate the marriages of gay and lesbian couples throughout Mississippi," said Roberta Kaplan, lead counsel in the case.
To opponents of same-sex marriage, who are not hard to find in conservative, Bible-carrying Mississippi, there is no legal debate.
"It's a question of God and what God wants for us," said Cynthia Jackson, who was getting her hair done at a small salon in Tupelo. "He says marriage is for procreation, and that is something only a man and woman can do. If gays want to live together as couples, nobody is stopping them, but don't let them steal marriage away from the rest of us."
Ed Vitagliano, the executive vice president of the convervative American Family Assn., predicted that the fight could get ugly. His Tupelo-based group describes itself as a "national Christian organization that exists to inform, equip and activate individuals to strengthen the moral foundations of American culture."
Vitagliano called the state's delay in issuing marriage licenses "a technical matter."
"The Supreme Court ruling is going to be implemented in Mississippi," he said. "This is the way our system works .... But when you have the Supreme Court inventing a constitutional right that shuts down the [democratic] process, you have an endless, frequently hostile culture war."
"It's going to turn nasty," said Vitagliano, who is also the pastor of Harvester Church, a small, nondenominational church in Pontotoc, outside Tupelo.
Hamilton and Smith were among the three couples who were able to tie the knot in Mississippi on Friday morning. Even before the Supreme Court's ruling was announced, they left their home in Laurel, Miss., early Friday for the church in Hattiesburg. There, they met up with Pastor Brandiilyne Dear, who had agreed to officiate if they could get a marriage license.
The three women waited in Dear's car in the parking lot of Joshua Generation Metropolitan Community Church, using their smartphones to monitor the Internet for word of the decision, and then it came.
"I instantly started crying," Hamilton said. "There are no words for it. It was surreal .... We'd been waiting on it for a month. We were planning on being the first couple in Forrest County. We weren't planning on being the first couple in Mississippi. It just worked out that way."
Dear married two more couples after Hamilton and Smith before the word came down to quit issuing marriage licenses.
Susman reported from Tupelo and La Ganga from Seattle.
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